Mandatory big update Feedback thread #53

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The implementation of UMD items that are race-restricted really have done wonders for improving race diversity. I would do more along those lines, than adding race mechanics. Although I do think half-orcs and half-elves are most of the time.

Adding more uniquely cultural items will just offer incentives to pick an untrodden path (i.e. would love to more axes for dwarves, two-handed swords for elves, clubs for halfling, etc). Way more exciting than +1 skillpoint or whatever.

[Svrtr]

I am in agreement with Mr. SSS, though in part because I am largely in favor of more racial (and to a degree class based) weapons, armor, jewelry, etc. Especially if they can be given unique effects like regeneration or something instead of more keen runic weapons.

There are certainly a plethora of things that could be fun, especially if they have VERY SPECIFIC crafter requirements such as both racial and class based crafter, such as "Can only be crafted by a dawrven earthkin defender" for some cool heavy plate.

And urgoshes. More urgoshes. Please, dwarven halberd or spear that is an urgosh (and hopefully one day models to match, ly devs)

[fading]

The implementation of UMD items that are race-restricted really have done wonders for improving race diversity. I would do more along those lines, than adding race mechanics. Although I do think half-orcs and half-elves are most of the time.

Adding more uniquely cultural items will just offer incentives to pick an untrodden path (i.e. would love to more axes for dwarves, two-handed swords for elves, clubs for halfling, etc). Way more exciting than +1 skillpoint or whatever.

Very much in favor of this. Maybe make the racial weapons with those that rarely get used, sort of like what they did with the light hammer for svirf. You'll never see someone using a handaxe or a club, and it's a shame. Weapon and armor diversity is always awesome.

[wulfburk]

Not to hijack the thread, but on the topic of weapon diversity: racial weapons or other gear that are added have to be actually somewhat good for them to be beneficial for such diversity and for flavour. No better case study than the warhammer: there is like 3 unique warhammers, and the best of those is the most vanilla of them, hammer of lightning. And its slightly worse than masterly damask. The other two hammers are for dwarves only iirc, but no one uses them, rightly so (first time we saw/ were given the judgement of the moradinsandman: what a fine ancient weapon, lets give it to our best holy warriors; second time: what a fine relic, lets take care of it, it belongs in a museum!; third time and onwards: eh, thank you *trashes it when no one is watching, we already have 50 stored and one will ever want to use them*.

Going one handed bludgeoning is really handicapping yourself unless you are a svirf. The result is, 99% of dwarves are using the runeaxe. And if there was no runeaxe, 99% of them would be using masterly damask waraxe as its still better than anything warhammer.

I assume it is fairly quick to add some properties to an item and add it to the matrix? What might take some time is the description and to see if it doesnt breaks balance, or adding it for crafting i guess?

Honestly i think every weapon type should have some 2/3 flavor weapons equivalent to masterly damask, or slightly better.
May i suggest then a community-suggested weapon update for matrix gear and also for new craftable weapons? Where people not only suggest the properties of the item but also the description, the name, and if its for the matrix or craft (and requirements). The best of these can then be added to the server. I'm sure with this you'll have quite a varied list of suggestions, encompassing all sorts of different races, weapons, backgrounds and lore.

[Irongron]

The idea of those racial and tunic weapons was something I got quite carried away with at the time, adding a great many in a short period, alongside an update to ensure they would need far beyond the normal UMD to use.

In hindsight, much as I was hugely enthusiastic at the time, it had mixed results. It was absolutely successful in making lesser used weapons a real thing (longswords! Light hammers!), and it made the associated races more desirable, but this was all at a cost of less diversity within the race itself - very soon every second hslf-orc, svirf etc, was using the same weapon.

I should have kept adding them, I suspect, but making and properly balancing weapons isn't easy, and despite having made a great many of those we have can also, quite easily, make mistakes.

[kinginyellow]

It was a single day that demonstrated once again that people will choose Power over RP. Every. Single. Time.

Explain.

Several people have said they would not touch Humans again until this was reverted. For the great majority of builds this equated to the loss of 30 HP and 1 Fortitude. Maybe the less of 1 AC/Damage/Save if you were going for divine feats.

If that is the sole reason why a player wouldn't touch Human again, it seems wrong. I can sympathise with people arguing that certain builds became literally impossible to do on Human, such as human monks not being able to get epic dodge and ki strike, or human barbarians not being able to reach 22 str and 22 con for mighty rage. But everything else? If Human was your concept play a human, just play a human with less 30 HP, the situations where you will die in PvP or PvE due to that are so so slim.

I would like for the changes to have remained, but understand why they were reverted and it doesn't bother me too much. But much of the reasoning in this thread to justify it seems to be made for the wrong reasons.

I'm a few days late to reply to this but I do want to point this out.

Humans are picked by a lot of people because of their versatility both in build and in RP, since they exist throughout almost all of Faerun. Like many people have pointed out here, they are not the most OP race choice for any given build besides super feat starved builds that -require- human or they are completely bust. I do not believe that people who are playing human are doing so to powerbuild, even if they plan out their build from 1 to 30 and try to maximize their character power.

But, when you take away 2 stats from this ECL 0 race, and turn it into 1 ECL, there's no reason what I was going to do with that human character can't be done on a Genasi, given that the only thing Genasi is going to add to the character concept is flavour. Genasi can be born anywhere too, the only thing that -really- needs to happen for a Genasi to be born is that during gestation the person be too close to a portal to one of the elemental planes, or in a place that is strongly attuned to an elemental plane. Besides that you can add one or two behavioral quirks and you're playing a Genasi that is the same concept as the human character you had in mind to begin with, but you're not losing any power for it, and whatever "meaningful roleplay" there is to be had will happen when you've invested enough time into the world and the people in it, and not just from the character you made.

This is why I was arguing for human to remain unchanged, because I'm certain more people would adopt this stance and you'd soon see a Cordor that is majority planetouched or nonhuman. Since you're taking away their versatility (some builds just straight up become impossible on a human or much worse than on the specialized race for it) people who for the most part play humans stated they would stop doing so. This is not surprising, since it's the core thing that makes the race appealing, and is in line with the race from a lore perspective.

Again, if you want to remove gifts, cap levels based on level adjustment, then you're not hurting 0 ecl races, and someone that wants to play a race with level adjustment, will have to make a sacrifice of epic levels for overall better stats and racial perks. If this is an unnatractive option, I'd honestly say just keep the gifts as they are, because right now, as they are, they still encourage players to pick 0 ECL races from a mechanical standpoint. But if Gifts were removed altogether and nothing was done to balance the fact everyone can hit 30 eventually I'd probably finally get around to playing that Orog I wanted to play. Not because Orogs are particularly powerful, but because they have the statline for the kinds of characters I like playing and would do a better job at it than a human does. Spoiler, at present, they still do, and the reason I don't play Orog for power, is because Human can do it too and not be -much- worse, and that's the appeal.

[ReverentBlade]

Lock gifts behind a backstory and description submitted to a team of lore nerds for approval.

[Tarkus the dog]

Lock gifts behind a backstory and description submitted to a team of lore nerds for approval.

Now that's what I call a great use of the smile emoji.

[Nurel]

It is also recommended that you have a reason behind each of your choices. Players are discouraged from taking things for purely mechanical or power gaming reasons.

Well, the first character I created on Arelith was devoid of any gifts, because I did not know whether gifts were actually ripe for the taking by everyone or not.

Then I quickly realized how the playerbase is unanimously adamant on this: taking the best possible gifts on a new character, mainly due to the PVP aspect of Arelith, is the only viable course. Needless to say I rerolled my gift-less character and never looked back.

I do welcome the gift system so long as they remain available for all players to take, as they allow for some builds which would only be possible on lvl 40. I reckon this is a fair compromise.
If I had to choose between a lvl 40 server without gifts, and a lvl 30 server with gifts, I'd go with option 2. But do I like gifts altogether? No. If there was a 3rd option for a "lvl 30 server with 0 gifts", I'd pick that one over the other two.
However, since the server has been operating under this gift system for so long and it has become such an integral part of buildmaking, balancing and gearing, I believe it would be very counter productive to remove said system without a vault wipe. And everyone hates vault wipes.

(edits for spelling)

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The idea of those racial and tunic weapons was something I got quite carried away with at the time, adding a great many in a short period, alongside an update to ensure they would need far beyond the normal UMD to use.

In hindsight, much as I was hugely enthusiastic at the time, it had mixed results. It was absolutely successful in making lesser used weapons a real thing (longswords! Light hammers!), and it made the associated races more desirable, but this was all at a cost of less diversity within the race itself - very soon every second hslf-orc, svirf etc, was using the same weapon.

I should have kept adding them, I suspect, but making and properly balancing weapons isn't easy, and despite having made a great many of those we have can also, quite easily, make mistakes.

I think in isolation it might have some downsides. We arguably just changed mdamask scimitars and rapiers for dwarven axes and moonblades. However.

We've paved the way for more cultural items and set good precedent. I think if we added just 1 other weapon to each of the races, we'd see another explosion.

Also, the roleplay around moonblades singlehandledy outweighs all the mechanical woes, imho. That was fantastic.

(my secret dark desire is that we see more racial weapons, so that maybe one day we can start adding... cultural items, alongside a "Gift of Culture" that would let you pick Thayan, or Turmish, or Chessentan, and you get X for doing so, and maybe access to Red Wizards Robes at long last)

[dallion43]

BALAGRN’S IRON HORN: No longer uses DEX bonus; 12 second cooldown added.

Can someone please confirm if the 12 seconds CD is shared with KD CD? Or it is on a seperate CD?

[SilverSnake]

So its making older drow pc's just worse and dividing the playerbase , punishing people for investing a lot of time on their drows. Hard to believe this is how it went.